A bit of advice required, hard drive click and Harman Kardon speakers

[myuserid08]

1) Hard drive:
Had my macbook for a few days now, but for some reason every so often I hear a slight "click" as though the hard drive had turned off, is this normal?

2) Harman/Kardon
I've had the HK speakers for a while now, they were connected to my iMac. Upon stating the iMac you would hear a couple of bangs/distortion whatever you want to call it. On my Macbook I have that all the time very minute or two, is this normal if so can it be prevented, settings etc?

 

[myuserid08]

I know no one replied to this but after a number of posts on a few other forums and a lot of research I managed to find fixes for the above problems.
1) The clicking hard drive is to do with Mac OS X over doing it on the head parking, if your drive clicks download and run "hdapm"

2) The speaker bang is to do with Mac OS turning the sound card on and off, download and run "KeepSoundAwake 1.3". Although this was written for Mac OS 10.1 it still works with intel macs and Leopard.

 

[ChrisA]

I know no one replied to this but after a number of posts on a few other forums and a lot of research I managed to find fixes for the above problems.
1) The clicking hard drive is to do with Mac OS X over doing it on the head parking, if your drive clicks download and run "hdapm"

2) The speaker bang is to do with Mac OS turning the sound card on and off, download and run "KeepSoundAwake 1.3". Although this was written for Mac OS 10.1 it still works with intel macs and Leopard.

So now you disk will be destroyed if the computer is dropped (parking heads prevents this) and the sound card is drawing battery power full time even when there is no sound to play. It's a trade off but I kind of think the head parking is a good idea

 

[myuserid08]

So now you disk will be destroyed if the computer is dropped (parking heads prevents this) and the sound card is drawing battery power full time even when there is no sound to play. It's a trade off but I kind of think the head parking is a good idea

Doesn't it park the heads when the macbook is switched off?
It was parking the heads every few seconds which was ridiculous, plus this causes premature drive failure.

 

[skorpien]

Don't mean to hijack the thread but I'm having the hard drive head parking issue too. Every 20 seconds or so. My MBP is only 12 days old (since it's arrival in the mail) so it's not like it's had a significant amount of wear. Is this a regular thing to have the head park this frequently?

 

[myuserid08]

I dont know, its very confusing as apple dont seem to know either. I contacted the nearest apple repair center and they have told me to post the hard drive for replacement.

 

[priller]

Doesn't it park the heads when the macbook is switched off?
It was parking the heads every few seconds which was ridiculous, plus this causes premature drive failure.

The heads are parked when its off & the SMS still parks the heads when it needs to.

skorpien, has yours always done it or did it start a few days ago?

 

[skorpien]

The heads are parked when its off & the SMS still parks the heads when it needs to.

skorpien, has yours always done it or did it start a few days ago?

I'm starting to think it's always done it but I just noticed two days ago. Considering it's only 13 days old it's very likely that it just took a really quiet room for me to hear it. In this other thread that I posted, I've come to understand that it's OSX that's parking the drive head regularly when it's idling (every 20 seconds or so) and that the Hitachi 7200 rpm drive is generally louder than others out there. There are programs that disable that feature, but honestly I'd rather live with the noise knowing it's normal than disabling it and running the risk of damaging my computer.

 

[priller]

but honestly I'd rather live with the noise knowing it's normal than disabling it and running the risk of damaging my computer.

Hard disks are normally rated for between 300,000 & 600,000 load/unload cycles. Parking the heads every 20 seconds could cause your hard disk to fail

You can check how many yours has done with http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/smartutility.html

 

[skorpien]

Hard disks are normally rated for between 300,000 & 600,000 load/unload cycles. Parking the heads every 20 seconds could cause your hard disk to fail

You can check how many yours has done with http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/smartutility.html

Pardon my ignorance... I've downloaded and ran this, but I'm not entirely sure what to look for and where. And how do I know if my drive falls within the proper range?

 

[priller]

By Attributes click the show all button, Load_Cycle_Count is the one you're looking for.

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       4695

That's my one month old macbook.

 

[skorpien]

By Attributes click the show all button, Load_Cycle_Count is the one you're looking for.

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       4695

That's my one month old macbook.

Okay, that's good news. My MBP is only 2 weeks old and it's sitting at ~1980. So judging from your number, I shouldn't be worried right?

 

[priller]

At that rate it will be at least 4 years until you get to 300,000, I'm not worried about mine unless the count starts increasing quicker. Other people have had over 40,000 load/unload cycles in a month.

 

[skorpien]

That's good to know then, thx. In 4 years I'll probably have an upgrade anyway, so there's definitely no reason to worry. Thx again for all the help.

And to the OP: sorry for hijacking your thread. I hope this has at least helped you with your original question...

 

[myuserid08]

I just ran that program and it says my brand new 160gb hd is failing.
Went to show all, and AIRFLOW_TEMPERATURE_CEL is highlighted in red, should I be concerned?

Load cycles 2115 (48 hours use).

 

[priller]

2115 in 48 hours sounds a lot, considering mines 4695 after 1 month ( almost 350 hours ).

No idea about AIRFLOW_TEMPERATURE_CEL, but I'd contact applecare if it shows up as failing.

 

[myuserid08]

Update:
Received a new hard drive from Apple yesterday. They have replaced the original fujitsu with a hitachi. Maybe they have realized there is a problem with the fujitsu drives not being liked by leopard.
Anyway I can now work in silence!